Configuration of security settings throughout an enterprise environment has been a more common customer requirement, e.g., with the adoption of later WINDOWS operating systems. After enterprise computing systems (e.g., desktop computers) have been deployed in an enterprise environment to their user community, the enterprise administrators may want to deploy new software or features which might require modifications to the security settings on each individual computer system. Enterprise administrators also may have a requirement to modify other computer security settings.
In order to modify these settings without manually touching each of these computers, the administrator would prefer to utilize a software distribution and management system to schedule the implementation of these security settings. In most cases, each of the target computers would require a supervisor or administrator password to be installed on each of these systems. The administrator would thus in turn need to know this password in order to apply these security settings. If these computers do not have a supervisor or administrator password, it must be set in order to apply these security settings. A problem is that this password cannot be set in an operational environment (e.g., WINDOWS operating environment) without exposing the computer systems to denial-of-service attacks by a malicious individual.